'Dallas' review: Oily JR ropes us back in

DAVID WIEGAND Television

JR Ewing (Larry Hagman) says Daddy would want him to drill for oil on Southfork in the new version of "Dallas."

JR Ewing (Larry Hagman) says Daddy would want him to drill for oil on Southfork in the new version of "Dallas."

Photo: Martin Schoeller, TNT

Photo: Martin Schoeller, TNT

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JR Ewing (Larry Hagman) says Daddy would want him to drill for oil on Southfork in the new version of "Dallas."

JR Ewing (Larry Hagman) says Daddy would want him to drill for oil on Southfork in the new version of "Dallas."

Photo: Martin Schoeller, TNT

'Dallas' review: Oily JR ropes us back in

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Dallas: Dramatic series. 9 p.m. Wednesday (June 13) on TNT.

TNT's new take on "Dallas" is so calculating, it's almost worthy of JR Ewing himself, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

Resist if you want to, but whether you were a fan of the original series, or still in utero when it went off the air in 1991, TNT's "Dallas" will wear you down and pull you in with its mix of sex, intrigue, backstabbing, dirty dealing, blackmail and family secrets. The Ewing clan still makes the Medicis look like the Waltons, and there are even more of them 21 years later.

For those who remember the show that virtually defined nighttime soap opera for 14 seasons, the new "Dallas" brings back several major cast members, including Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing, Linda Gray as Sue Ellen and the great Larry Hagman as JR - older now but as giddily manipulative as ever.

Takes a while to care

It takes a little longer for us to start caring about the youngsters, but even when we do, we remain primarily fascinated by Hagman's JR. We first see JR sitting in front of a window, staring straight ahead, not seeming to recognize anything or anyone around him. Later in the first episode, the old jackal rouses himself and starts to speak to John Ross, and it is nothing less than a gooseflesh moment - but the fun is only beginning. Hagman is magnificent, an Olympian presence who dominates the show even when he's not onscreen.

In the earlier series, JR was "only" magnificently unrepentant, but now he becomes almost heroic simply because he is much older: He hasn't much time left, but he isn't about to go gently into the Texas night.

TNT doesn't want critics to reveal many of the plot twists in the first seven of the 10 episodes of the season, but, truth to tell, things happen so quickly and often out of left field with minimal foundation, it would be impossible to detail the story line in ev en a single episode. But the heart of the series - if "heart" is even the right word - is that the Ewings are still feuding over ownership of Southfork, the family ranch, with JR on one side and Bobby on the other as kings on the chessboard, and John Ross and Christopher as their knights, or perhaps their pawns. Bobby has remarried, finding in Annie (Brenda Strong) the kind of steadying love and support he needs to fight JR.

While TNT's "Dallas" wisely builds on some fundamental aspects of the original show, it also modernizes the story, characters and values, because it has to. The Ewings all use cell phones and debate alternative energy, for example. But the differences between the two series are more subtle and, at the same time, more profound than that.

The first "Dallas" was a miniseries created in 1978 for CBS by Lorimar, the production company that had scored its first big success six years earlier with another family drama, the aforementioned "The Waltons."

A defining TV show

By the time "The Waltons'" run ended in 1981, "Dallas" had already asserted itself as a defining show for the new decade. It may be a facile comparison, but a show about a large, loving rural family in Virginia that ended each episode with everyone saying good night to each other seemed out of sync with the acquisitiveness of the 1980s. It's not coincidental that "Dallas" was soon joined by other shows about the rich and famous, including "Dynasty," "Falcon Crest" and, well, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

There was something delicious about rich people scrapping with each other back then. These were people who had it all and not only wanted more, but wanted to keep others from getting more as well. Obviously, the Ewings are still greedy, and still judging who among them is a true Ewing and who isn't - not just in terms of biology, in Christopher's case, but in terms of who best adheres to the values of past generations of Ewings.

Bobby wants Southfork to remain what family matriarch Miss Ellie intended, while JR says that he's doing what his daddy wanted (in fact, JR does what he wants and would no matter what Jock Ewing did or didn't want to happen to the ranch).

Life - and certainly the economy - are more tentative in the 21st century, and the world is smaller. Our values are different, and TV is different as well. The availability of hundreds of channels reflects the multiplicity of information sources that define communication and entertainment these days. That's one of the reasons you'll find that the new "Dallas" throws curveball after curveball into plot and character, often with little regard to credibility or logic.

Of course, this kind of thing has always defined soap operas, regardless of whether they aired in the afternoon or in prime time. But show runners know that there's a lot of competition out there for viewers' attention, and if you don't keep them mesmerized with constantly shifting "bright shiny objects," you can lose them.

True, there are more than a few moments when the absence of logic strains credibility in "Dallas." And soon enough, you start anticipating the next unlikely plot development moments before it actually happens. Why? Either because it's a cliche or it makes no sense. And on "Dallas," if it makes no sense, it's bound to happen.

Except for Hagman, the performances are adequate without ever standing out, which may be one of the reasons it takes so long to care much about the younger Ewings, or, as I came to think of them over the seven episodes sent to critics, the "Ewlings." It's not entirely the fault of the actors, though: As the script is written, there's very little time for any real character development. If a Ewling does a bad thing one second, he'll do a good thing two seconds later.

The female characters are especially elusive and underwritten, with the exception of Strong's Annie, who has her own secrets to hide. Gray still can't act but seems to be relying on her raccoon-eyed makeup to ground her character. She's wearing so much eye shadow, you half expect her head to pop out of a garbage can somewhere along the way.